This past Friday, I went to an event at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The event—Stitches West—is all about yarn and the things people do to yarn like knitting, crocheting, and felting and weaving and other techniques you don’t even want to know about. There were over 250 exhibitors, and each exhibit booth was filled with color and texture—and people. The hall was full, and there was a high level of energy as people—mostly women with a passion for knitting—moved from one exhibit to another. The huge hall was filled with people and the air was filled with the kind of hum I associate with a beehive. When I got there, I was swept up with excitement and struck out to see and touch as much yarn as possible. The feeding frenzy got me. I really, really wanted to buy something. I saw people standing in lines to buy what looked like nice yarn at bargain prices, but I can’t imagine buying yarn just to have it—buying yarn without a project in mind—and I couldn’t find the exact yarn I want for my next pair of socks. I bought an exciting book—I can always find a book, heaven knows—but I couldn’t find the yarn that was calling to me. I couldn’t find the color and texture to match my yearning, but I kept looking. My initial excitement for the exhibits lasted about 30 minutes. After that, it all began to blur, but I was still in the frenzy. Each booth looked like the one next to it, and I had trouble focusing on what was right in front of me, but I was still in the frenzy. After two hours at Stitches, I was done. I had walked past all the booths. I had seen all I could see and touched all I could touch. I had a goodie bag full of brochures, samples and my precious new book, but I had no yarn, and I was exhausted.
When I got to my car, my stomach was telling me that lunch was long overdue, but I couldn’t imagine eating. I needed to be in a quiet place, a place with yarn, a place with a few people, so I drove to Bobbin’s Nest Studio, the yarn shop where I learned to knit socks last month. When I walked in, Erin, the owner, greeted me by name, and asked how I was. I told her that I had been to Stitches, that I was overwhelmed by the experience and that I just needed to sit and knit for a bit. Erin has been to Stitches a number of times, she understood exactly what had happened and she jumped right in with exactly the right words and warm hospitality. She invited me to settle down on the couch and asked if she could make me a cup of tea, which sounded like heaven to me. I snuggled into the couch and stayed there for about 30 minutes, knitting my sock and sipping my tea while the business of the shop moved on around me. As I sat and knitted, my fatigue fell away from me and I found myself returning to my center. Each round of knitting brought me closer to the moment—closer to awareness of myself, of the yarn in my hands, of the fragrance of the tea. And then it happened. Without warning, I was filled with a deep sense of joy and gratitude—and I knew I was in the presence of the Holy. Right there in Bobbin’s Nest on a rainy Friday afternoon. After a while, the feeling passed and I gathered up my knitting to go home and go on with the day. As I left the yarn shop, I could hardly wait for this morning so I could tell you what had happened to me.
Sometimes we can hardly wait to share good things with other people. Sometimes we can hardly force the words out of our mouths. The Episcopal Church has been called the one of the world’s best kept secret. For many of us, the community of the church is the container that helps us experience the Holy. We come together to give thanks for the blessings of our lives, to pray for ourselves and the world, to give praise to God, to mark the important times of our lives with the sacraments that bring us closer to God’s presence, to support each other, to study and learn, to be forgiven for the things we regret and to be strengthened to do the things we need to do. We come together for all these reasons and to see in the faces around us the Good News of God’s love. Despite all this, the act of proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ is sometimes so difficult that we can promise in our Baptismal Covenant to do it only “with God’s help.” As I look around me, I know that for some people, proclaiming the gospel by example is an immediate response to their experience of God’s love. A day never passes without clear evidence of God’s love proclaimed by the actions of the people of this congregation. Words are sometimes a different matter.
I came back into the church just in time for the 90’s—the ten years labeled by the church leaders as the Decade of Evangelism—the decade of telling the Good News. I was new, and I kept waiting for something to happen. I thought there would be a plan. I thought we would do something. I thought we would find a way to tell people as a group and as individuals that we are part of something wonderful. I thought that telling people about God’s love for everyone would be pretty high on the agenda. That’s not the way it turned out.
We have all kinds of barriers to sharing our good news. It’s sometimes easier for me to tell strangers about God’s love than it is to tell my friends and family. But when I remember my own story—when I remember the years when I was pretty sure that God wanted little to do with me—when I think about how lonely it was in that old life that I loved so well—then I wish that a friend had invited me to church. Then I wish that someone had said, “I don’t know what you’ve experienced in the past, but this is what I’m experiencing now.” When I remember all that, then I have a bit more courage to step out in my sometimes questioning faith and tell someone how good it is to sit in a yarn shop and know that God is with me.
Proclaiming by word and example the Good News in Christ is not about being a super-Christian. Proclaiming the Gospel is about living and telling the truth of our own experience. Living and telling the whole truth, not the sanitized version we might believe people need to hear. That’s what the woman at the well did on that hot day, and that’s what we’re called to do as well.
Something happens to the woman at the well. During her encounter with Jesus, something changes in this nameless woman. Something makes her turn from her quest for the water that leaves us thirsty. Something that makes her yearn to stay in the experience of God’s love. Something that sends her running back to her village to tell others about her encounter.
When the Samaritan woman runs to her village, she witnesses to the full extent of her faith. Her budding faith in Jesus is based in her belief that he is a prophet. When she rushes to tell the townspeople about him, she can only tell them that he knows “all she has done” and asks them “Can this be the messiah? Can this be the Christ?” Despite her uncertainty, despite the tentative nature of her witness, she accomplishes an enormous act of evangelism and reconciliation. Because of her words, the people come to hear Jesus. They listen to him, and they invite him into their town, breaking down the barriers that had existed for generations. The woman’s words, spoken in hope and in fear, initiate faith greater than her own. She is an instrument of the harvest, making the fields white with the robes of the people flocking to hear Jesus’ words. This nameless woman, shunned by the people of her village, so set apart that she must even come to the well by herself—this woman becomes the instrument who helps the people find the living water brought to them by Jesus.
Today, in the middle of the six weeks of Lent, God calls each of us and all of us to dare to share who we are and how we are loved. We are called to drink deeply of the living water and to share with those who are thirsty. And we can do it, with God’s help.
Thanks be to God.